Why we are hosting 5th annual marriage conference in Kano – Northern Therapist founder

With rising divorce rates and shifting expectations around marriage, The Northern Therapist is spearheading a movement aimed at restoring peace, purpose, and partnership in marital life. Founded by Maryam Hassan Baba, the institution offers individual therapy, couples counseling, and an annual marriage conference. Now in its fifth edition, it brings together scholars, professionals, and young […]

With rising divorce rates and shifting expectations around marriage, The Northern Therapist is spearheading a movement aimed at restoring peace, purpose, and partnership in marital life. Founded by Maryam Hassan Baba, the institution offers individual therapy, couples counseling, and an annual marriage conference. Now in its fifth edition, it brings together scholars, professionals, and young voices to reframe marriage as an act of worship. In this interview, Maryam discusses the evolution of the conference, challenges facing modern marriages, and the urgent need for emotional intelligence, mentorship and faith-based resilience in the marital journey.

 

What is Northern Therapist community all about?

It is an institution that strengthens marital relationships and we do that through services like individual therapy, couples counseling and the annual marriage conference.

 

Tell us about this year’s annual marriage conference and how has it evolved over the years?

The annual marriage conference is a platform where we invite Islamic scholars, marriage counselors, other professionals and even young people to come together and have converse about how to strengthen the family unit by strengthening the marital institution because we have so many challenges in the marital institution. Thereis a rise in divorce rates and we want to see if marriage counseling can help reduce divorce rates. Every year. we look at the prominent cases that we receive in our organisation. What are those things that couples or people that are about to get married, what are those challenges that they face?

We look at the most popular challenge, and then it becomes the theme of the conference. We then reach out to speakers. We are in Kano now so we reach out to some of the scholars here in Kano and sometimes we even go as far as Lagos, Abuja or even as far as Cairo to get very prominent renowned scholars to come and talk about what people can do to improve their marriages so that we can have a better society.

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This is not the first edition, but the fifth. What differentiates it from previous editions?

Alhamdulillah this is the fifth edition and the reason we keep doing it is because we get so many feedback from the community about the impact, about how it’s improving lives, how it’s changing, how people see their marriages, how they are using some of the things that they learn from the marriage conference to improve their marriages. So that is why we keep doing it because people keep asking for it.

 

What informed this year’s theme?

Like I told you what we usually do is we look at the cases we get from people in marriage or intending couples. This year we are looking at the theme, ‘For the sake of Allah, restoring peace, purpose and partnership in today’s marriage’. When we looked at our records, we realised that in today’s marriage, in this modern marriage, people have forgotten that marriage in itself is an act of worship.

Marriage cannot be separated from trials, ssacrifice or worship. You worship whether you’re comfortable or not. But now, when people get married, and see that it’s not what they are looking for, they seek for divorce.  We want to call us back to know that since we are doing Ibada, we are worshipping, let us have patience. Let us have that purpose to understand what we are entering into marriage for.

If we are doing it for the sake of Allah, then what does Allah expect from us in marriage? Does Allah expect for us to have compassion, respect, forgiveness for each other? Are we doing all of these things? That is what we want to talk about.

So that married people know that you cannot be in a marriage, worshipping Allah and not have the element of forgiveness, patience or compassion.

 And to also remind people that whether you are the one that is not being patient with your spouse, or you are the one that does not have respect for your spouse, if truly you are in marriage for the sake of Allah, then you have to go back to your dream world.

 

What goals does the conference intend to achieve?

The main goal is to create awareness and take people back to the drawing board. For married couples, they should go back to the reason why they got married. What is the purpose of their marriage?

Let them purify their intentions so that they can do better in marriage. And also, for those people that are not yet married, let them remember you don’t just get married because you don’t just get married because, oh, now I’m 25 -years-old and working. That is not areason., you have to understand that marriage is an act of worship. Have you reached that stage, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and financially, to be able to worship in that marriage? And what that means that you are ready when trials come, not to always look at your partner and say, this person is a bad person, Iand so I’m going to be bad to them also. You can look at it and say maybe it’s a trial for me, can I be more patient? Can I be more understanding? Can I be more forgiveing?

This the mindset shift we want people to have at the end of the conversation, walking out with a different meaning of marriage. Because this modern marriage of today cannot be compared to marriages of before.

 Talking about comparisims, from your previous editions. What are the major challenges of marriage in Northern Nigeria?

The major challenge is that, most people don’t understand what marriage is before going into it. They look at it as that aspect of life that when you reach a certain age,  you become a graduate, you get a job and get married. They don’t understand that marriage itself is an act of worship.

And just like when you want to go to university, you need your five credits, including maths and English, even in marriage, you need some criteria. You need to understand what your roles and responsibilities are. You need to understand what your emotional intelligence is because you’re going to be triggered, this is marriage, this is somebody that you’re living with.

You need to know how to practice forgiveness, stay calm, even when triggered. Another challenge is that couples don’t communicate.

Communication is another challenge because when couples are getting married, they are usually advised to just go and be patient, that you don’t need to talk to anybody about the challenges of your marriage.

Couples offend each other, and have challenges, but because they have been told to be patient, and not totalk to anybody, they bottle it, and once it gets to a certain age stage, they just bust and they walk out on that marriage. So, we are encouraging communication between couples.

We are encourage couples to have what we call marriage mentors. Maybe your aunties, your uncles, not even your family. Maybe someone older who has a good marriage that you admire.

Because if we say your marriage mentor should be your uncle, your spouse might feel that it is your family and they can be biased. But if both of you have someone that you respect, that has been married for 35 years, and you like the kind of marriage that they do, if there is a problem and you can’t resolve it, why don’t you go and sit down with them to iron it out? That’s the essence of having a marriage mentor. Secondly, be open to couples therapy, like the things that we do.

There are so many renowned scholars, marriage counselors that do couples’ therapy to help them navigate any problem that they are having. So why do you want to just sit down and do things when you don’t understand how it is done? Why can’t you seek help for a better marriage? That is our goal for the conference.

 

Who are the key speakers and facilitators expected at the conference?

We have Malam Ibrahim Khalil is the keynote speaker. Dr. As speakers, we have Abdul Adil from Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies BUK, Professor Aisha Ismail from the Department of Political Science whonwas once the Director of Gender Studies also from BUK, Malama Zahra, a trained marriage counsellor, Malama Juwairiyya, Ustaz Abubakar, Coach Aisha Atta, who is an internationally trained Islamic pre-marital coach as well youths that are not married yet coming to share what they think can be done to o improve the marriage institution. We try as much as possible in the conference to have representation among our speakers, from scholars to professionals, to mothers, to parents, to even the singles. We  do that so we can have different perspectives and can all learn from each other.

 

How many participants are expected?

We are expecting about 2,000 participants from all over the world, because we do a hybrid event.

Physically, we have room for almost 1,500 people and, we have people joining from the US, UK, Dubai, anywhere in the world virtually. So long as you have data, you can register and be a part of the conference. To register for the conference, all they need to do is to come to our office and buy a ticket, use a link on our bio or send us an email to get the ticket.

 

When is the registration closing?

The registration is closes on the 2nd of November, Insha Allah.The conference is on the 9th of November, Inshallah, at The Afficent Centre. It is a one-day event. I want to encourage people to invest in this kind of event because these are events that shape our society, humanity and improve the standard of living of people in the society.